Traffic congestion may be determined by monitoring data from a combination of traffic data sources such as traffic channels, radio, and personal navigation devices. Thus, traffic information is reported to multiple data stores based on the monitoring data types. Traffic information provided to routing algorithms from these congestion identification sources come from secondary devices where the determination of traffic frequently requires analysis of source data to determine if traffic congestion is present. The aggregation of traffic data from multiple sources limits the speed of updating the congestion information based on changing traffic conditions.
Traffic reports may provide a high level view of traffic conditions. For example, providing traffic at the level of a traffic message channel (TMC) code provides a generalized traffic condition based on accumulated traffic information over multiple road sections. This form of congestion monitoring relies on ranges and averages of passing vehicles and may not report the number and wait times of vehicles in the same direction that are approaching a particular stop light in the same city. Further, fleets or groups of vehicle are not treated in groups. While some routing algorithms may take into account traffic congestion information, such information is provided from traffic broadcast that cannot take into account information from other drivers obtained from a centralized traffic map.
Currently available data probe information from Global Positioning System (GPS) devices provide data point information suffering from multipath and other problems in urban areas. These problems cause errors associated with traffic congestion analysis using GPS points. Automated vehicles determine general location using a variety of data including GPS sensors, Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR), visual street signs, and other information. Thus, an automated vehicle may be capable of better awareness of location than location determinations made from GPS points along, and thus may be capable of more accurate and precise traffic and congestion analysis. Accordingly, the use of only GPS location information in combination with traffic congestion reporting is limited in reporting vehicle location and traffic congestion with respect to accuracy and precision.